


you have to see what she becomes

by thermodynamicActivity



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Classism, F/F, F/M, Homophobia, Humanstuck, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, New York City, Period Typical Bigotry, Racism, Sexism, Underage Substance Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25433125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thermodynamicActivity/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: (rewrite/reupload of a previously deleted fic)Your name is Dolores Estelle Martineau. You're Dolo to your friends and family, Lola to people you really like, and only ever Dolores when you're in serious trouble.In 1970, you're fourteen years old, and the first black girl in a newly co-ed science and math school in downtown Brooklyn. That's not all you want to be. When you finish high school, you want go to college and study civil engineering, even if there are few people of your race and gender in that field.You're not alone, though. Your aunt's "friend", the highly affluent, highly homosexual Cecily Clark, a college junior and an aspiring scientist in her own right, is determined to see you succeed at all costs, even as her own issues threaten to swallow her alive.
Relationships: The Condesce & The Dolorosa (Homestuck), The Condesce/Original Character, The Dolorosa/Original Character
Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/189914
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10





	1. no choice but to be the first

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewrite of a fic i'd previously posted to the collegestuck Ao3 series in 2018, then deleted last year and revised.  
> I was planning to leave it deleted, but since another fic I recently posted to this series - "green, yellow, red, black" - deals with Cecily in her old(er) age, I realized that in order for readers to understand the emotional impact of her fate (on Dolores in particular), it would behoove me to repost the one other story that explores who Cecily is/was.
> 
> That said, while Cecily is an important character here, this fic revolves around Dolores and her high school years, taking place almost solely from her point of view.
> 
> For the few readers who are wondering who these characters are, Dolores Estelle Martineau is my human version of The Dolorosa, and Cecily Josephine Clark is (one of) my human version(s) of The Condesce. There are two Condesces in collegestuck, and they are half-sisters, sixteen years apart in age. The one (Carolyn Clark) who ends up in an abusive relationship with Simon two and a half decades from this point in collegestuck is not the Condesce character of this story, which should be fairly clear to readers. Just wanted to clarify, though.

“In all my years of teaching I’ve never seen a mind like the one your daughter has. You have to go. _You have to see what she becomes."_

\- Hidden Figures

* * *

**_September 1970 - Dolores Martineau_ **

Your name is Lola Martineau, and you are so nervous about your first day of high school that you have to keep reminding yourself not to vomit on anyone or anything. Your first day also happens to coincide with your 14th birthday. You have never been this anxious on your birthday. 

Your father hands you a brand new slide rule, which must have set him back a fair amount of money, and you can barely even thank him because your hands won’t stop shaking.

“I know you’ll do well. We're proud of you," he tells you in Kreyol, after he hands it over. "Martine saw this over on Nostrand Avenue and bought it last week. She says most students who are serious about math and science have one."

A gift from your aunt, then, who tends to have less spending money than your father. You make a mental note to buy her something in return, even if you have search under your living room couch for a few spare quarters.

You nod at your father, lost for words. You give him a peck on his cheek, which is scratchy with stubble, and walk out the door to wait on your front stoop for your ride.

Although you and Cecily Clark don’t really get along that well, she promised your aunt - by whom she is enamored - that she would drop you off at your school so you wouldn’t _die_ on the subway.

Despite having lived in New York City for more than a decade, your tante Martine detests the subway system, maintaining that it is no place for a young woman to navigate alone, unless that woman wants to be robbed, assaulted, and/or pushed onto the tracks.

You think she really needs to stop reading the New York Post.

Cecily dresses almost exclusively in either men’s button-down shirts, sweater vests, and trousers, or three piece suits, her outfits always perfectly tailored and immaculately pressed.

According to the gossipy women you do laundry and run errands with, when Cecily isn't in her classes at NYU, she apparently frequents bars and establishments that cater solely to homosexuals.

Her father, Wilson Clark, is either unaware of her extracurricular activities or has elected to ignore them entirely. Both possibilities are equally likely, considering the scandal that could arise were he to acknowledge Cecily's proclivities. Since the Clark family amassed their wealth by playing the stock market, but weathered the crash of '29 largely unscathed, they have to be one of the most affluent families in Brooklyn, black or otherwise.

Therefore, you have no idea how Cecily's gotten away with carrying herself the way she does for this long.

You tried to explain to your tante that Cecily had certain intentions with her, but your aunt, after a bout of furious blushing, said that if you were as rich as Cecily, and had been as lacking in maternal role models as she, you would probably be a little "confused" about men and women as well.

“Look at where you’re going to high school, Dolo,” Tante pointed out. “You’re not far off.”

Your aunt keeps worrying about you being in your high school's first co-ed class. If you were inclined toward women, which You Absolutely Are Not (You Swear), that would probably be the least of all evils in your aunt’s eyes. It would be just as disgraceful if you ended up with some white boy with no sense of decorum. Alright, so being a homosexual would be more disgraceful than that, but not by much.

Maybe ten minutes after you sit down on your stoop, Cecily pulls into a space only a few feet away from your house, and rolls down her window. She leans out and waves you over.

Today she's wearing a beige button down, a tyrian purple tie, and an off-black sweater vest, the thin gold rims of her glasses glinting in the sun, and her long black hair braided into a bun at the nape of her neck.

"Comment ça va, Dolo?" she calls out, her words halting but well-accented. If she's speaking French as opposed to English, or even Kreyol, she must hope to run into Martine, who left for work early this morning. Too early to even personally give you your slide rule

"Ça pourrait être pire," you call back after a half second's thought. It's true enough. Things could definitely be worse.

You hop off the stoop and start over toward Cecily, who gestures toward the front passenger seat of her car.

Her new car. As in, a different car from the one she drove from Park Slope to your house last week, when she came by to see your aunt.

_Is she serious?_

You do have to admit that it is a nice car, a slate gray Pontiac Firebird. You can see your reflection quite clearly in its gleaming finish. Parked two spaces behind her, your father's well-maintained but aging Studebaker looks downright decrepit in comparison, the scratches in the paint standing out all the more.

You climb into the seat next to her, and hand her the wrapped plate of breakfast you prepared for her.

Cassava, eggs, and sausage. Cecily may not be your favorite person, but you’re not one to be ungrateful, and she is dropping you off at school when she presumably has more important things to do.

"Thanks for the food," she says, placing the bag on the seat behind her. "I'll eat it after I get to class."

You put on your seat belt and roll the window halfway down so you can check your reflection in the side mirror. Jeez, this car even smells new. Cecily pulls out of the space in front of your house, the breeze cool and pleasant against your face as she drives downtown.

“Exactly how many cars do you have now?” you ask her, as you remove a tube of lipstick from your schoolbag and start to apply it.

Your father would kill you if he caught you wearing any sort of makeup, particularly the shade of bright red lipstick you bought yourself as an early birthday gift.

“Not enough. If I had my way, I’d have one for every day of the week,” she says, quickly scanning the street for pedestrians before disregarding the stop sign before her. “Ready for school, then?”

You show her your new slide rule. It looks far less new in Cecily’s brand new car.

“Every engineer needs one of those,” she says, with a somewhat patronizing smile. “You actually know how to use it yet?”

Now, you’re not one to be rude, but your mouth gets several steps ahead of your mind sometimes.

“What would _you_ know about _engineering?”_

She’s studying biochemistry at NYU, which, for the record, is not engineering.

“Some of my best friends are engineers,” she replies coolly. “We had a lot of them at _my school.”_

Her high school, all the way in the the Bronx. She graduated back in 1968, at the age of seventeen and two months, something she is rather fond of reminding anyone who will stand still for long enough to listen.

And yes, you might be one of the first women to set foot in that place on Fort Greene, but at least your school isn’t in the middle of nowhere. At least you know Brooklyn fairly well.

_(In twenty-eight and a half years, she’ll be the youngest acting principal in the history of that school uptown, at least until they find a proper principal and demote her to Vice Principal, and Biology Department head. You’ll be a guidance counselor, a position you’ll like just fine. And you two will argue endlessly about whose alma mater was better.)_

“My mistake,” you reply.

She digs a cigarette out of the box of Lucky Strikes on her dashboard - who in their right mind smokes Luckies except aging WWII vets? - and puts it into her mouth in one fluid motion.

As an afterthought, she takes a second one out of the box and hands it to you.

Is she testing you? She’s caught you smoking your father’s cigarettes in front of the statue of General Grant often enough for her to know that you might have a bit of a habit.

“I won’t tell your aunt,” she promises. “You look like you could use one, though.”

She gives you her lighter, as she drives down the street.

“I’ve never smoked in a car before,” you say.

“It’s the same thing as smoking anywhere else,” she says. “Just don’t burn a hole in my seat. This car's new.”

She turns off Atlantic Avenue. She gives you five more cigarettes.

“That should get you to at least eighth period,” she says.

She is so going to tell your aunt, And then Martine’s going to judge your life choices and make you to go to Confession.

“What would I light them with?” you ask.

“Everyone there smokes,” she says. “Just ask one of those boys for a light. Come to think of it, Luckies might be a little basic. They smoke grass there too, you know.”

Like, grass as in marijuana? Really? 

“I had no idea you were so knowledgeable about grass.”

You should thank her for the cigarettes, but you don't. Your previous statement hangs between the two of you like sour air.

“Listen, Dolo,” Cecily starts out. “I know you don’t like me very much, but…”

“I like you just fine!” you exclaim.

“…which is just as well, since I’m not particularly fond of you either.”

“Oh.”

Well, then.

“I’m saying that because I have a phone number for you. It’s the number for the secretary in the Biology department of my school. If anyone at school gives you a hard time, particularly the teachers, call that number. Say that you’d like to leave a message for me, and tell the secretary who you are. I’ll check with her after my classes.”

“So, if you don’t like me, why are you giving me that number?” you want to know.

“Women who are doing things they’re not supposed to do generally need other women to look out for them.”

“Are you suggesting I’m doing something I’m not supposed to do?” you ask, with a half-smile. 

“You know the answer to that, already,” Cecily replies. “You're a bit of a drag, but I’m proud of you, and I want to help you. There're only like twenty girls in your graduating class, after all.”

“Seventeen,” you correct gently. “That is, if I actually get to graduation."

You guess it’s alright to be nervous in front of Cecily. If she were going to judge you, she would have done so earlier.

“Oh, you’ll get to your graduation if it kills me," she says lightly, but the expression on her face suggests that she is wholly serious.

"You're assuming it won't kill me first," you fire back.

“Do what I did in high school and you’ll be just fine,” Cecily pauses only to make an illegal left turn. “Keep your head in your books, and stay away from boys you don’t know.”

“Which is all of them,” you remind her.

“Shouldn’t be hard, then.”

“What about girls I don’t know?”

“Be really careful around them, Dolo. Watch yourself and don't do anything stupid, unless you already know they share your inclinations.”

You stare at her like she’s grown a second head, your face going several shades paler.

“Pardon, Cecily?” you ask, feigning offense, as if you don't know what she's talking about.

When you were in seventh grade, Cecily had dropped by your house one afternoon to see your aunt, while you and Theresa Mason sat in your backyard doing a project for English class. You and Theresa had been close to each other for several years, living less than four blocks away from each other, and having sleepovers almost every weekend. Since the beginning of the school year, whenever you looked at her, your stomach went all fluttery and heat flooded your cheeks.

So when she abruptly kissed you on the mouth, you're not sure what possessed you, but you kissed her right back.

Then, you glanced around to make sure nobody had seen what you'd done. With one shaking finger, Theresa pointed toward your house. You followed Theresa's line of sight to your aunt's window, where Cecily stood staring directly into the yard. Her expression hardly changed for what she'd witnessed. She merely nodded at you, turned away, and pulled your aunt's curtains shut.

This is the first time she's even alluded to that particular incident. Although your heart hammers in your chest and your legs feel vaguely gelatinous, you think you just might get out of her car and walk the rest of the way to Brooklyn Tech. Why she had to bring up your most sinful moment of weakness, you don't understand.

“I’m just saying this to keep you safe,” she says. “You don't have to be offended.”

“I wasn't offended," you say. "And unlike some people, I don't _live_ in _sin_."

You shouldn't have said that, but you still cannot believe the audacity Cecily had in bringing up what she saw. Cecily looks hurt for a moment, and you nearly take back the comment, but for her retort.

“Sure you don’t.” She murmurs the statement with more than a hint of venom. "Keep telling yourself that."

You raise an eyebrow at her. “What are you insinuating?” 

“Nothing. Seems like you’re the one insinuating here. I didn't mean to upset you, Dolo, honestly.” Cecily replies, adjusting her glasses with one hand, the other on the steering wheel. "At any rate, what classes are you taking this year?"

You tell her. When she points out how tired you already look for someone who has yet to set foot in those classes, you inform her that you got exactly half an hour of sleep last night. You didn’t drift off until well after midnight. Fabiola started crying at 1:30 and wouldn’t stop.

“When you're at school, don't show any outward signs of fear, even if you are scared. If people think they've scared you, they assume that they’ve won. Worse off, they also assume that you're easy prey. Don’t give them the satisfaction."

Why she makes your upcoming year of 9th grade sound like the first battle in a war is yet another thing you don't understand. Nevertheless, you nod.

"Yes, Cecily."

"You went to your freshman orientation, right?” she asks.

“Yes, Cecily.”

Then, she touches on yet another uncomfortable topic. You idly wonder if she's doing it on purpose.

“How many black girls did you see in your graduating class?”

“Me,” you admit. “Maybe one or two others.”

You’re lying about the one or two others, but Cecily doesn’t have to know that. If she tells Tante Martine that you’re the only one out of seventeen girls, in a graduating class of almost nine hundred total, well, your aunt has a big mouth. She’ll let something slip to your father, who will lose his mind, march you all the way to Saint Joseph High School, and demand they let you enroll late.

Cecily won’t quite call you on your lie, but she seems to detect that you’re not being truthful.

“Being that you are one of the only ones, don’t get yourself into any trouble. Because you’ll be the first one they look at.”

“I haven’t even gotten myself into any trouble.”

“Yet,” she says. She gives you her lighter. “And I’ve changed my mind. Don’t ask any of those white boys for a light. Don’t talk to them if you don’t have to.”

“What if I need to borrow a pencil?” you ask, as she pulls up in front of your school. It’s so big that it could swallow you up. You raise your slide rule. “What if I don’t quite know how to work this yet?”

“I’ll teach you myself. They had a million of them at Science, and I had one too. And few giant calculators, but those are different devices entirely.”

 _“Calculators?”_ you ask. 

Sounds like some kind of torture implement.

“I’ll show you what those are. They have some at NYU, too.”

“Am I allowed to talk to the young men of color?” you ask, gazing at a few black boys walking toward the main entrance.

“Let me think about that,” Cecily declares, adding, after a moment, “Better not risk it until at least October. Just observe everyone for now.”

“Am I allowed to talk to white girls?” you ask, then.

“Yes, but don’t talk too much. You can’t really trust them.”

“And you know this how, exactly?”

“Why don’t you try taking my word for it? I want to see you do well, maybe even being first in your class.”

Cecily was fourth when she graduated. She still hasn’t entirely forgiven herself for only being fourth.

No way in hell will you be valedictorian, even if you are as intelligent as your family seems to think.

Although you managed to do three-fourths of the problems in Leandre’s old textbook, when you found out you’d be taking geometry, the concepts don't come to you intuitively, the way they always did with him.

Your brilliant, talented, dead brother. A wave of grief overtakes you.

Still, you get out of Cecily's car and start walking toward the formidable main entrance of your high school, wondering what Leandre would have to say to you if he could see you now. 


	2. hold on, don't fight your war alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title taken from janelle monae's "americans"

**_September 1970 - Dolores Martineau_ **

In your homeroom, room 703, you’re the only girl in your class of thirty students. You were sort of hoping that half the students in your homeroom would be female, that they’d group you seventeen girls together like that, but apparently not.

Your homeroom teacher hands your schedule, once she calls your name.

You’re taking the exact classes you signed up for, save science and math.

You got a 97 on the Regents exam for Biology, so now you’re in Chemistry, which sort of makes sense.

But whoever figures out what classes you should be in has put you in… Honors Trigonometry for math?

You don’t even know what trigonometry is, beyond a theoretical level.

“Best of luck with Chem and Trig,” your teacher says. “Those classes are usually reserved for sophomores and juniors.”

You do your level best to keep your expression neutral, as you thank her, and try to quell the anxiety welling up in you.

Maybe you’ll march yourself down to Saint Joseph High School's office of enrollment tomorrow morning, and ask how registering late works.

That seems like an increasingly good idea, as everyone in your class continues to stare at you.

After homeroom, you have ten minutes until your first class. You walk out of school and over to a payphone, leaving a message with the secretary Cecily told you to call.

“There’s been a change of plans with my schedule,” goes your message. “I’m in a two tenth grade courses. Is there any way you can pick me up when I get out at 3:30?”

Your first class is the dreaded trigonometry, where you are the only girl on this entire floor, and to boot, you're five minutes late after getting yourself lost trying to find the classroom. Your teacher, a stout, balding man with chalk dust on his blazer, asks you to repeat your name three times, checking his attendance sheet after each time, before he accepts that you’re in this class.

“Do you have the slightest idea what we do here?” he asks.

“Math?” you try.

It's only after you speak that you realize exactly how discourteous and sarcastic that sounded.

Lola, where are your manners?

Mr. Giordano suggests that if you want to continue being rude to him after coming to class late, perhaps you'd prefer to learn trig in the deans' office. Your heart rate doubles and you nearly drop your pencil case, hands shaking.

(“Don’t show your fear, even when you’re terrified.”

You don’t see how you could keep it hidden.)

You do your best to keep your voice even, as you reply.

“I'm not yet familiar with the topics we're supposed to be learning, but I’d like to learn them, if I can. And I’m really quite sorry for both my lateness and my rudeness."

That seems to take the edge off his anger. Perhaps the fact that you look like you're about to cry also has something to do with it.

“Very well, then. I'll be lenient, considering that it is your first day," he says. “Take any seat, Miss Martineau, and do try to keep up."

He butchers the pronunciation of your name.

And although all your instincts are screaming at you to find a nice, unobtrusive seat in the back, you take the desk front and center.

If you’re going to be in sophomore math, you might as well sit as close to the board as possible.

When the bell rings at the end of class, Mr. Giordano takes you aside. He wants to know what you're even doing in honors trig to begin with. Good question. So do you.

"I think I was put here because of my score on the math placement exam," you offer. That's your theory. "At any rate, isn't trigonometry a prerequisite for calculus?"

"You intend to take calculus?" he asks.

When you nod, he says something to the effect that he's seen relatively few young women who have the temperament to succeed in such courses.

"You should be aware that there will be no preferential treatment here. I'll be watching you closely, young lady, and I will not hesitate to recommend that you be placed in geometry if you fail to keep up, or disrupt my class again."

When he finally lets you leave, you murmur several choice words in Kreyol, to the empty hallway.

For God's sake, you haven't even done anything wrong yet.

Next, comes your French class, six floors up. French is easy. You come from a middle class Haitian family desperate to become more well-to-do, and your aunt went to a convent school where most of her classes were conducted in French. You’re all but fluent in the language.

English is less easy. You’re an aspiring engineer, not a writer.

Research Methods is even less easy. You spent your first eight years of schooling at Saint Peter Claver, where you learned everything about the catechism and nothing about the meaning of a null hypothesis. However, Research is mandatory for all freshmen, so you’re stuck with it.

History seems like it should be easy. You’ll make it easy.

Lunch should be easy, but it isn’t.

You go outside for that period, 7th period, and chain smoke about three of the cigarettes Cecily gave you, once you've walked most of the way to Junior's Cheesecake restaurant. That puts you far enough away from school that none of your teachers should catch you smoking

One of the boys from your first class, a black boy, with skin a shade darker than yours, asks you for a lighter. You stare at him, with your eyes as wide as saucers, and say absolutely nothing at first. 

He asks you again in Kreyol, and then, and only then do you hand it over to him.

“Thank you,” he says, finally switching to English. “So do you talk at all? Besides when you're in dutch with Giordano?”

You do. Just not to boys.

But you have a question.

“How'd you know I'm Haitian?” you ask.

He shrugs, and gives you a lopsided grin.

“I heard you in the hall after Math," he replies. "Only person I know who can swear like that is my father."

“Giordano deserved it,” you say defensively.

“You don't see me arguing, do you?” Julien’s still smiling. He gives you back your lighter. “So now that we've established that you can talk, does that mean that you have a name?”

In spite of your misgivings, you find yourself returning Julien's smile.

“Dolores," you tell him. "Dolores Martineau, but everyone calls me 'Dolo' unless something is wrong."

“Well,” he says, extending his hand for you to shake. “I’m Julien. Julien Renaud.”

Once he's introduced himself, an awkward silence descends upon the pair of you. Cigarette still in hand, Julien finally gets bored, crosses the street, and disappears into Junior's, giving you one lingering glance from the doorway. You wonder if he intended for you to follow him in. You hope not. You don't have enough money to get food from somewhere like that. 

As you walk back toward school, you decide not to tell Cecily you broke the rules.

Your next class, Chemistry, is interesting. Your teacher's a woman, which surprises you. She’s a woman, but that doesn't make her soft. In fact, she seems like the most difficult teacher you'll have this year, although far less inclined to hate you than your math teacher.

After you get out of school, and don't see Cecily parked anywhere on the block, you figure you’re going to have to take the subway home. You hit Atlantic Avenue, and spy Cecily’s empty car double parked half a block up. You walk into the drugstore she’s parked in front of, where she’s haggling down the price of another pack of Lucky Strikes with the man at the counter. She gives you an approving and relieved nod.

“Oh good, you got my message," she says.

You shake your head and raise your eyebrows.

“What message?”

“I left a message with the front desk of your school a few hours ago. I’ll be picking you up from school until the 20th.”

Is that so? Seriously?

“Why?”

Having succeeded in getting her cigarettes for cheaper, Cecily steers you out of the drugstore and lowers her voice so that only you and she can hear.

“You seem like you could use some assistance. Correct me if I'm wrong, Dolo.”

You don’t want to be Cecily - or anyone’s - charity case. Emboldened from surviving your first day of school, you tell her exactly that as the two of you walk back toward her car.

“I don’t do charity,” she says.

She comes from one of the best families in the city, black, white, or otherwise.

All of them do charity to assuage their guilt at being ridiculously wealthy.

“Your family would beg to differ.”

“I’m not my family, now am I? Not entirely,” she replies. She gives you seven more cigarettes, and opens the door of her car. “Now get in, before I change my mind.”

You shake your head at her, but comply.

“Fine."

Cecily talks to herself for a good part of the drive back to your house.

“So they figured they’d get the jump on you and put you in sophomore classes to confuse you?” she asks. “Well, that’s not going to happen. You’re still going to be first in your class.”

So engrossed is she in planning out your future that she runs a red light without noticing.

“I don’t know the first ten elements on the periodic table. Someone in chem knew fifty," you inform her. "And in trig, we’ll be learning about logarithms, whatever those are. I don’t even know how to _spell_ that.”

“You’ll know the whole damn thing, from one all the way to a hundred and five, by the time I’m finished with you. As for math, well, did you get your log or trig tables tables yet?”

You feel as if your head is spinning. “Log tables? Trig tables?”

“I’ll get you copies. In fact, I’ll get you copies tonight, and give them to you tomorrow morning. Show them to your bastard of a math teacher.”

“Should I try to memorize everything on them?”

Cecily shakes her head and scoffs at the idea. “You don't have to - that's the point of having them - and you probably wouldn't be able to. Not unless you’re exceptionally brilliant.”

You cross your arms over your chest, and, half-joking, ask, “What makes you think I’m not?”

Cecily actually laughs at that.

“Good answer. Ask your homeroom teacher what college classes you can take next year, next time you see her.”

You blink at her.

“Isn’t college a long way off?”

“You’re in 9th grade. When I was in 9th grade, I already knew what college I wanted to go to.”

You sigh. She wins.

“I wonder if it’s too late for me to enroll at St Joseph’s,” you muse aloud.

Cecily brakes hard at the next light, and turns to shoot you a glare.

“First day and you want to give up already?”

“If I don’t enroll there soon, it’ll be too late. And you’re right. I’m not exceptionally brilliant.”

She pulls into a nearby parking space, lights a cigarette, and turns around to regard you properly.

“That isn't what I meant with that comment, Dolo, and you know it," she says. "Anyway, nobody starts out being exceptionally brilliant. But you want to be somewhere that it’s an option.”

You sigh again. Cecily goes on.

“If you hate this school so much, transfer to another school like it. There’s one in downtown Manhattan, not far from NYU. You could probably get in. It’s been accepting girls a year longer. I think they have around ninety of them there, now. Maybe that wouldn’t seem as difficult.”

Who hasn’t heard of Stuy? Cecily would have gone there, if she could have, if they'd been taking girls when she applied.

“Now I know you’re messing with me. I’m not smart enough for that.”

“Then what about my high school?” she asks, voice full of pride. “That went co-ed in the forties. Girls and boys, there’s practically an even number of them, now. You grab the 4 at Eastern Parkway, and you ride it until the third to last stop.”

“Only one train?” you ask.

“Only one train,” she repeats. “You'd have to take another admission test, though. And you have to register to do that before the third week of September.”

“I could do that,” you figure.

She nods. “I’ll make sure they look out for you at that school. Assuming you don’t decide to stay where you are.”

You shake your head at her. “I’d like to get as far away from where I am, as fast as I can.”

Cecily looks you over once more.

“Don’t give up yet, Dolores. They count on us giving up.”

“They?"

“If you don’t know who ‘they’ are by now, I can’t help you." She stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray on her dashboard and lights another. She continues, “They’re all around you. From your math teacher down to your father. They look at you, and they think they can dictate your capabilities and your future. The only way to stop them is to prove them wrong. If I could do it, you can do it.”

“I don’t want to let anyone control me,” you say. Once again, an approving nod from Cecily. “Including you. I don’t want you to try to convince me I can do something I can’t.”

“You can do a lot more than you think,” she says. “If you could convince your father to send you to this school, you can probably do anything you put your mind to doing. Also, if you give up, Martine will never let me hear the end of it.”

Your aunt was forced to drop out of school when she was fifteen, which wasn’t all that long ago. You think it’s been around nine years. Maybe eleven. No more than that, you think.

“Tante is trying to live vicariously through me. Especially since my mother's too out there to tell her what an idiot she is.”

Back in June, shortly after your 8th grade graduation, your father drove your mother all the way to a place called Creedmoor Hospital, which specializes in treating people who have depression as bad as hers. When you last saw her in August, she seemed exactly the same. Even more catatonic, if such a thing were possible. You have the sneaking suspicion that your mother is going to be the way she is for a few more years yet.

“Can you blame her for wanting to?”

Honestly, you can’t. Not now. Not anymore.

Your tante was going to finish up her secondary school credits over the next few years, if not for the fact that you need her at home to watch Sebastien, Jean, and Fabiola, so you can go to high school. So you don’t only owe your success to yourself. You owe it to her.

“Alright, Cecily. Say you’re right. You’re going to be tutoring me for a long time. Are you sure you want to do that in your junior year? Don’t you have your own studying to do?”

“Even if it takes me an extra year to finish, which it probably won’t–” It probably won’t, she is the smartest person you know. “–I can afford that. I started early.”

“I know,” you say. Like she, or anyone in your family, would let you forget that she started at NYU only a few months after turning seventeen. It's intimidating to contemplate. You'll never be that intelligent.

* * *

**_November 1970_ **

Cecily more than makes good on her promise to tutor you, lest your aunt never forgive her. She’s a tutor, a guidance counselor, and a… drill sergeant all in one, perhaps. Leandre’s stories of basic training seem far less arduous than learning from Cecily.

With a pang of sadness, you reflect on how much you miss your brother. He'd probably be a far kinder teacher than Cecily. You wipe a stray tear from your face, and mentally kick yourself for being weak.

Still, Cecily is quite good at teaching when she puts her mind to it, even if she isn't the kindest instructor.

You suggest to her, half-joking, that perhaps her forte doesn’t lie in biochemistry research, but in teaching. It only takes her a fraction of a second to burst out laughing at the idea.

“I’m helping you figure out your future, right, Dolo? Trust me when I say I can figure out mine. I have a nice place in the undergraduate lab, and credits in two publications,” she replies, once she's done. “So stop stalling for time. What are the roots for that equation?”

“The roots?”

“Do I have to walk you through it?”

“Well, I look at my graph. And there are three roots, because this is a cubic function, right?”

“You should know by now if you’re right or not.”

You write out the solution set.

_{-4, -1, and 2.}_

At least they’re all integers this time around.

“Don’t forget to show all your work, otherwise you won’t get full credit,” she says. “While you’re at it, what does a sine function look like? And a tangent function?”

“Sine looks like a wave. Tan looks like…” You gesture in the air with your pencil.

“Graph them.”

Tangent’s so confusing that you actually do that correctly. Cecily seems satisfied. Then you fuck up and graph cosine instead of sine.

“Dolo!” she shouts, once she notices your mistake.

“Sorry!” you say hastily. “I take back what I said. You should never be a teacher, Cece.”

“Glad we got that straightened out. And I apologize for yelling at you.”

* * *

_**January 1971** _

Your final report card day for the semester is officially the best day ever, at least until you get your marks. You have a hundred in every class, except for history and chemistry, where you have a 95 and a 96 respectively.

That makes you tenth in your graduating class, so far.

Cecily doesn’t even read you the riot act for being nine places behind where she expected you would be.

No, Tante yells at you about that, in French, no less.

She’s been speaking to you solely in French since the start of the school year, where your French I teacher beheld, four days in, that she had nothing to teach you. You took yet another test, and ended up in third-year French, with a bunch of taciturn juniors who looked angry about still having to take another language. 

“Ten, Dolores?” she exclaims. “You and Cecily said you’d be first! When I was still in secondary school, I was second!”

Second out of like, maybe forty or so. Classes in Haiti were small, and she only dropped out when she came here.

“Can I talk to you, Martine? S’il vous plait?” Cecily asks, in nervous French, the only class she could really not help you in. You have no idea why not. Her mother came from a highly affluent family in Port-Au-Prince. You'd be shocked if the woman hadn't been educated primarily in French, as opposed to Kreyol.

Cecily knows many science-related words, having taught you a few you didn't know existed, but sometimes she can’t remember the simplest thing.

“Yes?” Martine asks, in heavily-accented English. You think it’s an olive branch. She’s not that much more proficient in English than Cecily is in French.

“She’s in two tenth grade courses, and an eleventh grade one. Very few first-year high students take classes like that,” Cecily points out, once more in French. “And she’s ten in a class of… how many people, Dolores?”

“Nine-hundred something,” you answer. "Nine-hundred fifty-seven."

“That puts her nearly at the top one percent of her class,” Cecily continues. “How many people were in your class, Martine?”

“Three classes. Fifty-one, total,” your aunt says, sounding annoyed.

“I can do much better now that I know what I’m doing,” you comment. “I’ll get properly into the single-digits rank wise next semester. I can be first then, I promise.”

Your aunt seems even more annoyed to hear you say this.

You think you realize why your aunt and Cecily get along so well, other certain… proclivities that they may have, which neither of them have ever spoken to you about. The two of them, much to their detriment, cannot stand to be corrected in the least.

“You can tell your father, then, since you're so smart. He’ll have something to say, he’ll be right, and I won’t defend you.” She looks even angrier at the idea of your father being right about anything. “You may have done better at St. Joseph’s. At least there, you’d learn the virtues. What do you know about the virtues, Dolores?”

You rattle off all seven, trained from years of Catholic school. You rattle off all seven in French, no less.

“You know but do not understand. Humility is a virtue,” your aunt says, with a sigh.

Now you’ve worked yourself down to the bone, only sleeping for six hours per twenty-four, just so you could get these marks, and make her proud. Not only is it not enough, but she’s saying this to you?

“Patience is also a virtue, Tante,” you reply. "Let me have another semester."

Cecily steps in before you can get shouted at, and smooths things over with Martine. But your aunt’s initial order is absolute.

You must be the one to take news of your most disappointing failure to your father, and no, Cecily cannot come with you.

Your father, who stressed poor Leandre out about his marks even though he was salutatorian to Regis High, class of 1966. Then he got drafted during his gap year between high school and college and ended up dying in Vietnam. You miss him more than you can express. He’d know what to say to you. He’d be able to give you advice. He’d protect you from your father’s ire.

You don’t think your father will countenance “ten” much, whether you say the word in Kreyol, French, or English. You walk the half block from Martine’s apartment building to your parents’ house. Cecily promises that she’ll stay at Martine’s until you tell your father everything.

When you unlock the doors, he’s already sitting in his chair, drinking a cup of hibiscus tea. Your hibiscus tea. Which he professes to detest.

“Papa,” you say.

“Tout bagay anfom?” he asks, noticing that you have begun to quiver.

“Everything’s fine,” you assure him. “I got my last report card for the term.”

“And?”

You switch back to Kreyol.

“I’m sorry to tell you, but I only got a hundred percent in a few of my classes. Not History. And not Chemistry.”

“What did you get in those classes, my dear?”

“Ninety-five in Chemistry, and ninety-six in History.”

He breaks into a broad smile.

“That’s excellent! Excellent! Wait until I tell my friends about my brilliant daughter!”

“I haven’t finished telling you everything, Papa.”

“Wi?”

“Mwen regret sa,” you say, tears gathering in your eyes, tears that spill over when you say the next thing. “But I’m only tenth in my class.” 

“Only?”

“Only ten.”

“You’ll study with Cecily more, then,” he declares in English. “Do I give you many chores, Dolores?”

“No more than I can handle.”

“I must give you too many, surely.”

“No, that was my own oversight. I did not study hard enough for my tests. I swear I’ll do better next term.”

“Good, good,” he says. So, now you’ve been downgraded from excellent to good. “With that sort of diligence, you’ll be first in before long, won’t you, Dolores?”

You could kick Cecily for putting the idea in Martine's and Papa's head that you could ever be valedictorian to your class.

“I will.”

“Good, Dolores. You may be a girl, but you're very intelligent. Do you know that?”

You accept his backhanded compliment with grace, a bold refutation only an inch away from your lips. Cecily would have definitely had a disrespectful retort for that. But she’s not here. 

She does have more than a few retorts when you two return to her place for tutoring. If you’re determined not to rest until you are first, neither will she. That said, being that the new semester doesn't start for a few days, all the two of you have really been doing is discussing the ongoing Vietnam protests in Washington Square Park and disparaging your family. It pains you to be so critical of them, but if you didn't express these feelings to someone, you'd probably have a nervous breakdown and end up in the hospital with your mother.

“You’re more than smart for a girl,” Cecily insists, once you’re done telling her every word of what your father had to say. “You’re smart in general. Your family’s crazy. And I’m going to talk to your Papa. He expects too much.”

“He expects enough,” you say. Unlike Martine, you do respect your father. You won’t have an outsider telling him what to do. “He expected the same thing of Leandre.”

“Tell me, did Leandre ever have take care of the children?”

“Why should he have had to?”

“You have to.”

“He was a boy. I’m not. And he never met Fabiola. She was born after he deployed.”

“Exactly. And he wasn’t one of the first girls at his school. That should count for something.”

“He was one of the first black boys at Regis,” you counter. “That should count for something, too.”

Cecily sighs.

“I’m not trying to start a fight with you, but you’ll lose your mind if you hold yourself to these ridiculous standards,” she says gently. “I wasn’t first in my class. And my parents never expected me to care for Carolyn. Yet, they are still proud of what I have achieved.”

“Just as well, since you’re awful at caring for children,” you say half-mocking.

Carolyn, her sister, was born a few months before she graduated from high school. Cecily maintains that her sister is a brat of a child who hates her. You have never known two year olds to hate, though. She seems like a perfectly sweet child, if spoiled.

“That’s also true,” she agrees. “And yet, my parents are proud of me. Why can’t your family be proud of you?”

“We were not all born with silver spoons in our mouths,” you fire back. “My father knows what hard work is. He expects me to know, too.”

She doesn’t rise to the taunt. She’s too dignified for that. She keeps at her initial argument.

“Yes, yes, your father who comes home from work, and sits in his chair. Meanwhile, his daughter goes to school for seven hours a day, comes home, and takes care of his children with one hand, while she balances equations with the other. Even Martine, who busies herself with children while you’re at school, and hands them over you as soon as she can. Tell me, how come they only have to write with one hand, when they’re older, and you have to be ambidextrous?”

Were you not arguing with Cecily, you'd compliment her on the way she expresses herself.

“It’s just the way things are, alright?"

“Things shouldn’t always be the way they are!” She explodes. “You think I didn’t want to go to Stuyvesant? I spent four years telling myself I had to be at my school because of the way things are! Because they didn’t take girls until 1969. Fuck the way things are!”

“Easy for you to say!”

“It’s not easy for me to say. It’s exactly why I want to talk to your father!”

You do your best not to cry. Your father and Cecily have always gotten along, despite Cecily's allegiance to Martine, but they both have such strong personalities that you doubt this talk will take place without a huge argument ensuing.

“You really want to talk to him?” you ask. "Talk, as in, not talk down to him?"

“Yes, Dolo. Whatever it takes.”

“What would you even tell him?”

“I’d say, that as your tutor, who has nothing but your best interests at heart, that if he wants you to be valedictorian so badly, why doesn’t he give you the chance?”

That still sounds too confrontational, especially since Cecily will be speaking to your father in his own house. Also, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

“What do you mean? He let me go to this school. I have the chance.”

“As long as you have to do so much outside of class, you don’t,” she says. “I talked this over with Martine earlier. She’s willing to have Sebastien, Fabiola, and the other one–”

“Jean-Claude,” you supply, almost automatically.

“Yes. Him. Your aunt’s willing to care for them on a more full-time basis, if it means you gain the edge in your studies.”

“She’s not,” you murmur. “She hates children. No way.”

“Didn’t she intercede on your behalf when you were trying to convince your father to even let you attend Tech?” Cecily presses. “Some of her stubbornness aside, she very badly wants to see you succeed. Antoine was dead-set against you going to this school in the first place, and you know how much she enjoys proving him wrong.”

“As always.”

“As always,” Cecily agrees. “She’ll come with me when I talk to him. And if we can’t convince him, I don’t think anyone can.”

That’s for certain. Cecily and Martine are the sort of women who could convince a mountain to get up and move elsewhere if they tried hard enough.

“So,” you say, ready to devise a new plan of action now. “To become first, what do I need to do?”

“Everything,” Cecily maintains. “Not only do you have to do everything, but you have to do it better than a thousand other people. What classes are you taking next year?”

“More research. Honors Precalculus, Honors English, and Honors Physics. And two college level classes.”

“Really, now?”

“French and World History."

“I won’t lie to you, Dolores. When I was in high school, I didn’t take a lot of that until junior year. This is going to be harder than anything you or I have ever done.”

“Do you think we can do it?”

“It’s on you to do most of the work. I think you can do it, but you need to be prepared to study for like eleven hours a day.”

“If Martine has the children, seven hours of school and eleven hours of studying leaves me six hours to sleep. That’s two more than usual,” you say, with a hint of sarcasm.

“Also, you can definitely use all the help you can get, if this is really what you want,” Cecily continues, as if she hasn’t heard you. “Don’t be afraid to lean on those friends of yours.”

Your friends, whose existence she has come to accept. Julien Renaud, who is like her in terms of preferring to love individuals of his own gender, as Cecily might put it. And Xavier Yamada, who, like Cecily, seems to look mildly displeased at all times.

You’re the only person in their group who wears a skirt, those Black and Asian boys from your Chemistry, French, and Trig classes. But since they’re not freshmen, your aspirations don’t pose any particular threat to them.

It’s a far cry from Cecily’s old “stay away from boys” warning, but you’re going to need more than that, now.

“I understand,” you tell her.

“When’s your first day of school?”

“In two days.”

“Be ready, then.”

Oh, you’ll be ready. You’ll be the most ready. You’ll get straight hundreds from here on out. To be honest, you don’t know if you want to be valedictorian. You don't actually care either way. However, if first in your class is what your father and Tante want, in order to absolve you of caring for your siblings, in order to let you focus solely on school and your future, you’ll do that and hang upside down the entire time.

Cecily’s plan to ambush your father goes without a hitch the next day. Tante hounds him in Kreyol until he acquiesces to their demands..

“Your studies, then, Dolo. Focus on your studies,” your father says, turning to you. “Why aren’t you studying?”

“There’s no school until Monday,” you say.

“And that means you can be complacent?”

You want badly to roll your eyes at your father and inform him that you haven’t learned anything new since before midterm reviews, was a few weeks ago. Exactly what are you supposed to be studying at the moment?

Cecily badly disguises her laugh as a cough until your aunt pulls her into another room.

For lack of anything else to do, you go upstairs to the room you share with your siblings, and sing the first forty elements, from memory, in French to the tune of a song you’re making up on the spot. It’s devoid of dissonance and gentle enough that it soothes them. While you don’t need to know the whole periodic table in any language for the Chemistry Regents, and you don’t need to know the elements for the French Regents, it keeps you busy. It keeps your mind moving.

Jean-Claude half-awakens and hurls his rattle at your face. He hits the bullseye.

You groan, and stop singing.


End file.
